How to read an OVK report — field by field

An OVK report documents a completed functional inspection and always contains the same core data: the building and address, inspection date, inspection type, ventilation system type, building category, result, any remarks, the date of the next inspection, and the inspector's name, qualification level and certificate number. Everything else varies between suppliers. This guide walks through the fields and what they mean for you as owner.

The fields that must always be there

Field	What it means	Why it matters
Building / building ID / address	Which building the inspection covers	One property can hold many buildings with different systems and different dates
Inspection date	The day the inspection was carried out	The start of the interval
Inspection type	First inspection or recurring	Determines whether a recurring interval begins at all
Building category	Apartment building, office, school/preschool/care, one- or two-dwelling, industrial	Half the answer to the interval question
Ventilation system	S, F, FX, FT or FTX	The other half of the interval question
Result	Passed or not passed	Governs whether a new inspection is required
Remarks	The deficiencies noted	The basis for the remedial work
Next inspection	The date of the next inspection	The date the whole tracking hangs on
Inspector	Name, qualification (K or N), certificate number and certification body	Your means of verifying the inspection is valid

If any of these fields is missing the report is not finished. Ask for a completed report rather than filling in the gap yourself.

Passed, passed with remarks, not passed

This is the single most common source of misunderstanding.

• Passed without remarks — the system meets the requirements. The next date is calculated from the interval.
• Passed with remarks — the inspector has noted deficiencies to be remedied, but not of a kind that fails the inspection. The inspection is valid, but the remarks remain until they are addressed and you still have a duty to deal with them.
• Not passed — the deficiencies must be remedied and a new inspection carried out. A failed report does not start a new six-year interval.

What does "passed with remarks" mean — is the ventilation approved or not?

The inspection is approved in the sense that it was carried out and the system was not failed, but the remarks remain and must be addressed. The building committee can order you to correct a deficiency stated in a report even where the report otherwise passed. The difference from a failed report is therefore not that the remarks are harmless, but that they did not require a re-inspection. How to handle them: passed with remarks — what must be remedied.

The date that governs everything

The "next inspection" field is the only thing in the report that is a future obligation, and therefore the thing worth double-checking. Recalculate it yourself: inspection date plus the interval for the building category and system type, per the interval table.

If the pre-printed date does not match the table, it is almost always the category or the system type that is wrong in the report header — not the table. In our own extraction, that exact inconsistency is one of the reasons a report is quarantined rather than stored: when a stated next date is six years out for an FTX system that requires three, one of the fields is wrong and a human needs to look.

The remarks — what must be readable

The remarks section is the least standardised part of the report. Sometimes it is a bullet list, sometimes a table, sometimes running text under each space. Whatever the form, four things must be readable per remark:

1. Where the deficiency is — building part, stairwell, flat or unit.
2. What the deficiency is, concretely enough for a contractor to price.
3. Whether it affects the result or is a note.
4. What the inspector recommends, if anything.

If point two cannot be read, the remark is not actionable, and you should ask for clarification immediately — not six months later when it is time to order the work. A remark phrased as "insufficient flow in some flats" without saying which is an example.

Note also that energy advice sometimes appears in the same section. Where there is reason, the inspector must propose how energy use can be reduced without worsening the indoor environment. That is not a remark and carries no duty to act — but it is regularly confused with one, which makes remedial lists longer and more expensive than they need to be.

If the report never arrived

A common situation in larger portfolios: the inspection was carried out, the invoice was paid, but the report is nowhere. Then:

• The inspection still counts as carried out, but you cannot show it, and you also lack the next date.
• Ask the inspection company for the report. They should have it archived.
• The building committee may hold a copy if the inspector sent it in; routines vary between municipalities.
• If the report is gone for good, the practical solution is a new inspection, because otherwise you are planning blind.

It is also the strongest argument for reading reports in digitally on arrival rather than filing them: a document that exists only in an inbox is a document you will be missing.

Why no two reports look alike

There is no national template. The inspection is regulated, the document is not — and with thousands of inspection companies in the country there are roughly as many layouts. Some deliver structured web reports, such as Funkis (the Swedish association of ventilation inspectors) with its OVK report, others a PDF from their own template tool, and some still a scanned paper form.

For someone reading a single report this does not matter. For anyone compiling a hundred reports a year into one picture it is the whole problem, and it is why OVK handling in Emphyx is built around extraction from the document rather than around a data entry form.

Check three things before you file

1. That the inspector was qualified on the inspection date. The certificate number and certification body are in the report and can be looked up — see qualified ventilation inspectors.
2. That the next date matches the category and system type.
3. That the remarks reached an action list with an owner and a date, not just the binder.

A filed report nobody recalculated is not documentation — it is an assumption. If the report is also to produce a certificate for the stairwell, see the OVK certificate: the requirement and where it goes.